Do you ever get the feeling, nothing is cool anymore?
There is a pervasive emotion that people across generations feel as we speak, a constant talking point with friends and at events… so much of everything that has lost its luster in the last 6 months!
Creators are copies of other creators, another “kinda chic to” carousel, another “10 out of 10 habits niche edition” video.
Stores designed off the same mood boards, brand derivatives.
Importantly, we are relentless forced into experiencing these things.
If you simply succumb to what your algorithm will naturally show you, you’re going to be shown a lot of the same things as everybody else.
All the right places in the “cool” cities are the perfect target for the Le Labo, the Blank Street, the Uniqlo, the cafe that looks like another cafe.
You can watch the same derivative male or female interview-based business advice podcast on the flight on the way over…
In summertime this seems to come out even further because you see the same people taking the same vacation photo as a hundred people you’ve seen before them, paying money to remake someone else’s scene.
Now, I believe, quite definitively, there is an absolute, incredible amount of cool things happening in the world, in fact… its truly unprecedented?
The amount of genre-bending designers, the ability to make any niche app to connect with people worldwide, to find your art scene, to marvel at creatives around the globe you never would have seen before, to build collaboratively with people you meet online… this gets me so supremely inspired and captivated, I often find it hard to sleep.
In this newsletter, we’re gonna talk about the balance of those things.
A week or two back I was speaking at an event in Idyllwild called FWB Fest that I was familiar with but had never attended. It was extremely inspiring on a number of levels.
The FWB team took over the Idyllwild Arts Center, basically a mini campus for talks and workshops, really centered around the fringe and the future.
I gave my talk inside the library, talking about the future of how ideas move on the internet and how the scale of content creation across formats and people is fundamentally changing how ideas travel in media.
At the same time, my wife and son were in an amazing workshop creating stackable lamps of 3D-printed shapes, learning the basics of PCB. In the room next to them, people were vibe coding their own games.
The previous day, I watched an excellent talk about breaking scenes into frameworks: the roles different people play in expanding a scene and how scenes grow, contract, and evolve over time.
Right after, there’s the thesis from Ruby Justice Thelot about how optimization causes far more harm than good, presented in a fascinating fashion, like only he can.
It was quite the anecdote to events of panel after panel that just feel, frankly, useless and not hands-on. The opposite of what I felt in most of what I attended at Cannes.
Part of the allure of this event is its distance.
It’s not simple to get to Idyllwild. It’s hot, logistically complicated, not really near any major airport.
To even seriously consider about the event, you kind of have to be scene-related or know somebody.
I remember sending the lineup to some friends to see if they wanted to go and having people be intimidated by the depth of thought on the topics. This is a good thing. This is the natural friction that exists for something to be “cool.”
Friction is missing in an algorithmic world that rewards safe formats.
In this YouTube video, I talk pretty extensively about this (shout out the thumbnail squad).
It’s worth remembering that if you ask AI for a creative idea or feedback, it’s going to give you safe answers. It’s based on what it knows.
What it knows are essentially a collection of existing items and best practices. You’re going to get something that is a completely fine answer, but not independent. That’s not its job.
Same thing with a content algorithm: if you’re being shown content, it wants to show you more successful content so you keep watching.
That’s why you’ll end up with more views talking about “five things that are worth the money” for the 10,000th video than you will with a completely original concept, unless you are an exceptional creator.
Most people don’t want to put in the work to be an exceptional creator, so they make the “five things that are worth the money video”, and because you watched one, the algorithm shows you more.
And whenever anyone says they hate what’s served to them on Reels or TikTok, you have to have the awkward knowledge in the back of your mind that that content is a reflection of them.
It is the things that they watch, knowingly or unknowingly, what they search, the actions they do. If it’s slop and you hate it because, in your deepest mind, this is what you’ve told the algorithm that you want through your actions.
It’s very easy to get outside of that, but this also comes down to your character and personality.
I go to pretty decent lengths to try to find really interesting people on social media creating out-of-the-box content and follow them, and then pretty actively search to see what they are up to every week versus relying on the algorithm bringing them to me. By me taking the offensive on this, I signal to the algorithm again and again and again that what I want is more interesting creators.
If you never take the offensive, then you’re simply given what’s in the darkest recesses of your pleasure brain, which, if you’re any kind of intellectual person, you will probably abhor.
And it also hurts in how you teach. We’re coming up on the 25th Cut30, more than two years of teaching people content. We’ve worked pretty hard to make it open ended, to not force the exact same hook and content, to find your voice and your story.
We’ve had some amazing ones recently
Marilyn on whats ruining American cities
Levi on the maternity market
Matt on influencer culture backlash
Fashion advice from Katherine.
Jenny on foyers.
But as the field gets more and more crowded, I always have the voice in the back of my head… that more people would get views faster if they just did the same thing as everyone else. We must resist.
And as a consumer, you must act to control your experience.
It’s the same thing in the cities. They’re going to put as many Blank Streets, Le Labos, and Uniqlos as possible as close to the “cool” part of all the major areas, because that’s what’s going to make them money.
You have to go out and establish friction to find the more interesting things, and that’s fine, its always been like that. Friction is always important, but the new problem we have lost the basics to adopt it in our lives.
For many people, they’re leading truly soft lives.
Delivery apps mean they don’t have to go out and interact with people, nor do they have to cook.
Remote jobs mean they’re working at home. They can do less. They can do it in comfort.
Corporate obscurity has meant that you either feel OK not working particularly hard, or if you are working particularly hard, it’s on stuff that doesn’t make sense.
And if you have an excuse of any kind - you feel the patriarchy is against you, you feel the woke mob is against you, you feel you shouldn't have to work hard, the algorithms will feed you SUPPORT for your excuse.
Yes, the man/woman/woke/right are holding you back.
Yes, you should hustle, no you shouldn’t work a minute more than your corporate overlords require.
An infinite mirror we are not mentally equipped to overcome, particularly creatives who will be a bit in anguish anyway.
This is not dramatically different at its core than any decade prior, but like everything gin the modern era the volume is turned up on every experience, ever choice, its documented, its an information highway, more opinions on more minor things than ever.
If you felt that feeling I describe in the video, that everything just kind of feels torched, you need to reset it.
May I recommend a pallete cleanse? A full video with Scott Norton, founder of Sir Kenzington’s, on world building for brands, nary a growth tactic or social video insight throughout.
Until next week,
Oren
Want to scale your brand with us? darkroomagency.com
The next Cut30 short form bootcamp starts September 16th: https://cut30.co
Oren - please keep doing what you are doing. You are truly amazing, and I always leave your content with a completely new perspective. Thank you for the work that you do!!!